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16 December 2008

From ' Black Beauty ' to ' The Underneath ' : 132 years of great children ' s books about animals

There are books I read as a child that I'll never forget, and most of those books were about animals. For my SFGate.com column this week, I got together with children's librarian Carla Kozak at the San Francisco Public Library, and came up with two long readings lists of some of the best classic and not-yet-classic animal books for children.

What most struck me as I researched this piece is how much my view of the world had been influenced by reading those books when young -- and not just because I grew up to be an animal writer myself:

That's the potential great children's books have: to influence how we see the world as adults. The best children's books about animals also make us think about science and nature, and our place in the natural world. They teach us compassion for other living creatures, including other people, by making us care about both realistic and anthropomorphic animals in the stories we read. Books about animals and nature expose children, most of whom grow up in cities, to ways of life they will only ever know in the pages of a book - to farmlands and countryside, fields and forests. Even children who never ride anything more exciting than the school bus can race the Piebald horse with Velvet Brown, struggle to survive with young Alec Ramsey and the Black Stallion, or believe they, too, could tame a half-wild horse like Flicka.

I admit I'm a wimp -- books like "Old Yeller" and "Where the Red Fern Grows" traumatized me when I was young, and helped form my current policy of "I don't read books where the dog dies." Fortunately, Carla isn't quite as weak as I am, and helped me include a number of books old and new that I wouldn't willingly have read. "The Underneath" is one of those:

It's been a long time since a children's book got the kind of attention Kathi Appelt's novel The Underneath is receiving. It's a 2008 National Book Award finalist, and is being read as much by adults as by children. And it's dark - so dark I won't read it. (Given that I'm 49 years old and still have never knowingly killed a spider because I was so affected by Charlotte's Web, I may not be the best authority on whether or not a book is too upsetting for a child.)

Fortunately, although Kozak, too, finds it hard to read books in which animals die, she's far braver than I am. "This book is stunning," she said. "It's about an abused hound dog who forges a relationship with two orphaned kittens. The animals save each other in this book, which is loaded with magical realism. There's a shape-shifting serpent who has been letting her anger feed her evil side, and an alligator who is her old friend. There's a human who abuses the dog. And it works, it works on every level. Is it about animals? Is it about humans? It's certainly about human nature, and it's a wonderful tribute to love and devotion. Not one word rang false to me in the entire book."

As for the classics, I'd have probably picked a different book when I was little, but without a doubt, the book that I loved most as I re-read these titles was Eric Knight's "Lassie Come-Home." That book is not quite about what I thought it was when I first read it:

Forget the television shows, the films, and the marketing hype. It's in the pages of this book, and only there, that you'll find the real Lassie.

It's also there that you'll find the most iconic story ever told about the loyalty and love between child and dog. Lassie belongs to a family struggling with poverty on a Yorkshire farm in Depression-era England. They're forced to sell their beautiful Collie to a wealthy nobleman when the father loses his job, but she keeps coming back to her boy, Joe. After the third time, the lord ships the dog to his estate in Scotland, but Lassie… well, you know the rest. She comes home.

I picked this book up at my local library a few days before I wrote this article, and read it for the first time in many years. I discovered two things: One, there are a number of abridgements and re-tellings of this story in print and on the shelves of bookstores and libraries; be very, very sure you're getting Knight's 1940 classic and not one of the imposters.

Two, you can take my hip cynic's card away forever, but this story deserves its lasting fame. When Lassie makes her last terrible journey home, and Joe realizes that it's not just that he wants Lassie back but that Lassie wants him back, it takes every bit of sentiment in this undeniably sentimental tale and turns it into something altogether different, and more authentic: one boy's sudden understanding of the power of the bond between human and dog, and the fact that the bond goes both ways. Every obstacle falls away before that simple power.

You'll cry until you get to it, but this story has a happy ending. If your child has never read it, or you haven't, or you've forgotten it, find it.

The main article is here, and it links on to the readinglists. And after you read it, please tell us, which childhood animal books stand out in your memory? Which would be on your list?

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Most everything on the list is something I'd put on my own list of favorite animal books.

I'd also include Helen Griffiths' Just a Dog. I think I got it from Scholastic, when I was in 4th or 5th grade. It ends well, but it made me cry my eyes out. I re-read it a few years ago, and it stood up well (still made me weepy, though!).

I had read many of the listed books as a child, but the one that touched me most was Beautiful Joe. I had no idea then that it was a true story, nor that it was written in the 19th century. There was something in that telling that embedded in my heart for life. At 66, I still get tears remembering.

You may laugh -- and you likely should -- but when I was 10 or so I loved this book called "Tecwyn, Last of the Welsh Dragons."

It was about a baby dragon who needed to eat coal to keep his fire alive (and keep himself alive), but when as a big dragon he eats all the coal, he gets a bar of uranium from the nuclear plant. Nuclear power saves the day!

I wonder how many other children's books would raise an eyebrow today. When Christie was working on this piece, she mentioned Albert Payson Terhune ("Lad: A Dog," etc.). She knows I collect first edition Terhunes.

She didn't know that in his books the bad guys are always immigrants: Poles, Irish and Italians. And the bad dogs are always mixed-breeds, "curs" in the Terhune book.

I considered Watership Down, but although it's ostensibly "about" animals, I don't think it is. Of course, that's true of many books, but the ones I chose for the list work on both levels, but this one doesn't seem to "work" as an animal book at all.

I could be wrong. I admit I never even got through it once. Like I said, it was a personal list more than a comprehensive one. I left off "The Red Pony," too, mostly because I HATE THAT BOOK WITH A BURNING PASSION and wish I'd never even heard of it, let alone read it. I'm the world's biggest wimp.

Arg! With you on "The Red Pony", Christie! I still remember the scene with the vultures and I read it...more than twenty five years ago.

They also had us read some horrible short story in intermediate school about kids who killed a kitten (with graphic descriptions). Oh God, those school collections were TRAUMATIZING. I was the sort of kid who would read the stories just because they were there, but when this one was assigned, I was done reading the collections "for fun". Bastards.

Oh, and I have another one, only in the Sci-Fi genre: Andre Norton's Iron Cage. I read it when I was about 9yo, and was hugely influenced by it. I just re-read it last summer, and it's still an awfully good book.

I read a book called Hurry Home Candy when I was young and can still remember the name almost 40 years later. An abandoned dog makes his way through the scary world. Well off to Amazon to buy it again. I also loved Hold the Rein free - horse book by Judy Van der Veer.

How about Old Cat by Barbara Libby. Its supposed to be a kids picture book but I believe is more for adults. The cover is worth the price. Always makes me cry.

If you can find "War Horse" by Michael Morpurgo it's an excellent read. It's along the lines of Black Beauty but about a horse in World War I. Excellent book. I think I read it as many times as I ready Black Beauty. Those 2 books made a huge impact on me as a kid and how I treat animals.

My Friend Flicka is the first book of the trilogy -- the other two are Thunderhead and Green Grass of Wyoming. I mention it, because among my all-time favorites were the latter two, and the last includes some wonderful scenes of the friendship between a draught gelding and a lost Thoroughbred filly.

A book I'd add to the classics list: The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth. Although, mind, it's at least a two-handkerchiefer.

There is a Beautiful Joe Heritage Society and park in Meaford, Ontario, a pretty little town on Georgian Bay. There is a statue of Beautiful Joe and a cairn, as well as a memorial for Sirius, the K-9 police dog killed during 9/11.

http://redstarcafe.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/beautiful-joe-and-sirius/

I also love Michael Morpurgo's writing. War Horse was stunning, and Britain's National Theatre is running a production of it using brilliantly-constructed life-sized puppets.

Only ignorance! only ignorance! how can you talk about only ignorance? Don't you know that it is the worst thing in the world, next to wickedness? -- and which does the most mischief heaven only knows. If people can say, "Oh! I did not know, I did not mean any harm," they think it is all right.

Sadly, these words are just relevant today, and the harm to animals is incalculable.

I am so happy that you included THE UNDERNEATH by Kathi Appelt in your list of beloved books. I too enjoyed BLACK BEAUTY, MY FRIEND FLICKA, and even the early edition of LASSIE COME HOME. I still teach and work at the high school and enjoy books about animals at my advanced age of 72. I think, like you, that THE UNDERNEATH is a classic.

I'm late catching up on blog reading so maybe no one will see this comment, but an all time favorite of mine is _The Shy Ones_ by Lynn Hall, about a girl who is working part-time for a vet, finds a golden retriever injured by the side of the road, and nurses the dog back to health physically and mentally. I dug up a copy on half.com to reread just before adopting my rescue golden. It's a really sweet book.